No Progress in Increasing Black Enrollments at University of California Campuses at Berkeley and San Diego

Last week JBHE reported the impressive gain in the number of black students admitted to the University of California at Los Angeles. But blacks did not fare as well at the other two most selective campuses of the University of California system.

This year there were 308 black students admitted to the University of California at Berkeley, a slight increase of 3.4 percent. But due to an overall increase in students admitted, the black percentage of all students admitted to Berkeley remained at 3 percent.

In 1997, before the ban on affirmative action admissions went into effect in California, 562 black students were admitted to Berkeley. They made up 6.8 percent of all students admitted to Berkeley that year. Thus, the black presence at Berkeley is still less than one half of the level that prevailed when race-sensitive admissions were permitted.

Black enrollments at the University of California at San Diego are even lower than at UCLA or Berkeley. Blacks are 1.3 percent of the undergraduate student body at the San Diego campus. This year, despite an increase in black applicants, the number of black students admitted to this campus dropped slightly. In 2007 there were 386 African-American students admitted to the San Diego campus. They made up 2 percent of all students admitted.

Copyright © 2007. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. All rights reserved.